Cellphones, camcorders, and digital cameras are all popular consumer electronic devices. A cellphone is a device that can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link from within a wide geographic area by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile phone operator, allowing access to the public telephone network. A camcorder is a portable electronic device that combines a video camera and a video recorder into one unit, typically for hand-held consumer use. Digital cameras are generally smaller than camcorders, and while once limited to capturing still images are increasingly capable of recording video as well.
Cellphones have increased in capability and have now evolved into so-called smartphones. These mobile phones are built on a mobile computing platform, with more advanced computing ability and connectivity than a typical cellular phone. The first smartphones were devices that mainly combined the functions of a personal digital assistant (PDA) and a mobile phone or camera. Modern models also incorporate the functions of portable media players, low-end compact digital cameras, pocket video cameras, and GPS navigation units.
Today's smartphones typically also include high-resolution touchscreens, web browsers that can access and properly display standard web pages, and high-speed data access via Wi-Fi and mobile broadband links. Application programming interfaces (APIs) on smartphones allow third-party applications to better integrate with the phone's operating system and hardware, while cellphones more commonly run on proprietary firmware. A variety of operating systems power conventional smartphones, including Android™, iOS™, and Windows® Phone (Android™ is a trademark of Google Inc., iOS™ is a trademark of Cisco Systems used under license by Apple Inc., and Windows® is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation).
The confluence of consumer electronic devices and capabilities continues, yet each device type retains particular advantages for its intended design. Each also has limitations that prevent adoption as a true general-purpose consumer device widely carried for everyday use. For example, sharing of captured videos via the internet is a popular activity, yet many smartphone users do not find their captured video imagery to be as high quality as that captured by a camcorder and later (and less conveniently) shared online via a personal computer.
This patent application provides a viable approach to solving this challenge and presents a practical implementation of that technique.